2021-11-20
Fred Petrossian–Imagine you are having a get-together with some friends in your home, drinking coffee or tea, talking about religious issues, praying, and reading the Bible. Kids are around and playing together. These very innocent get-togethers have been a target for the Iranian state for decades as its security forces attack these homes, arresting Christian converts and sending them to prison. The Iranian state has forcibly closed Persian-speaking churches and forced many Christian leaders to leave the country. Christian converts are deprived of the right to have a church or place of worship in Iran, and the state does not even tolerate worship in their homes. The “Church is the […]
2024-12-03
Fred Petrossian* – This paper was presented at the conference Digital Religion III: Challenges of Communication and Excommunication, organized jointly by the University of Silesia in Katowice, Palacký University Olomouc, and the University of Lodz. Introduction Since the Islamic Revolution in February 1979, Iranian citizens have faced continuous censorship and repression. This has disproportionately affected women and religious minorities, depriving them of fundamental rights. Repression began immediately after the revolution, with incidents such as the murder of a Christian convert pastor, Arastoo Sayyah, in Shiraz just eight days after the revolution’s triumph.[1] This murder, occurring less than 200 hours after the revolution, set the tone for a decades-long campaign of persecution […]
2020-09-28
International organizations, including the United Nations, have condemned the Islamic Republic several times for violating human rights and the rights of religious minorities. Sanctions on those minority communities have ranged from imprisonment to being banned from university and from losing jobs and property to even being killed. MvoicesIran talks with Said Mahmoudi, Professor Emeritus of International Law at the University of Stockholm to discuss religious and conscious rights in international law, violation of those rights in Iran, and the capacity of international organizations to curb such actions by States. The rights to freedom of thought, religion, and conscience, which include the freedom to change religions or beliefs and to worship […]
2022-10-26
Fred Petrossian–80,000 people in Germany’s capital have been marching in solidarity with protesters in Iran. On 22nd October, demonstrators came to Berlin from all over Europe. A statement was read at the end of this historic gathering which talked about periods of repression and state violence from the beginning of the Islamic Republic to the present. The statement also mentioned the repression and discrimination of ethnic and sexual minorities. However, incredibly, no mention was made in the statement about the persecution and suffering of religious minorities during the last 43 years. For more than four decades, the “Islamic Republic” has deprived millions of people of their basic rights as citizens. […]
2022-09-01
Fred Petrossian–The “I am A Christian too” campaign was launched by a group of Iranian Christian converts living in Stockholm, Sweden, in October 2020 in order to pursue policy change in Sweden and Iran. “I Am A Christian Too” is a loosely organized but sustained campaign among a group of Iranians who share Christianity as their core belief and set their main goal of being recognized as refugees by the Swedish government. As of July 2022, this campaign has held almost 50 gatherings in Stockholm, making it the most persistent street movement among Iranian religious minorities and even Iranian asylum seekers in the diaspora. At each meeting, between 20 […]